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First Posted on Inside Mindanao: April 4, 2007

Sea-dwelling tribe claims sea as ancestral domain
By Ellen Red

SITANGKAI, TAWI-TAWI—Sowang Pukul, which literally means broken river, has no river at all. It is in the middle of the Sulu Sea and not an island in sight.

Atiyan Gollom told Inside Mindanao that Sowang Pukul used to be the home of the Bajau tribe, also known as Sama Dilaut. Houses of the Bajau called lumah, from afar, are like floating houses. Long wooden posts buried deep into the sandy sea-bottom keep the lumah still.

Through the years, Mr. Gollom, one of the handful Bajau who choose to remain at Sowang Pukul, said that about 300 Bajau families have already left Sowang Pukul and opted to migrate to Semporna, Sabah, Malaysia (which can be reached via 3-hour motorized boat ride); while others opted to settle at the nearby island which can be reached by 20-minute motorized boat ride. Sowang Pukul is part of Sitangkai town, Tawi-Tawi province.

Sabtal Putalhangin, a Bajau teacher at the Mindanao State University High School in Sitangkai town, told Inside Mindanao that the Bajau at Sowang Pukul were displaced by the influx of evacuees belonging to the Tausug tribe from the neighboring province of Sulu.

Mr. Putalhangin said, "The Bajau tribe is a peace-loving tribe. Conflict with other tribes like that of the Tausug is often dealt with by fleeing to other places."

In a report by the local government unit of Sitangkai, since the declaration of Martial Law in the 1970s, there has been a continued influx of migrating families, specially the economically displaced Tausug tribe from Sulu province, to Sitangkai town.

In 2004, Mucha Shim Quiling Arquiza, a representative of Lumah Ma Dilaut Center, reported to the United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commission on Human Rights Sub-Committee on Human Rights Promotion and Protection Working Group on Minorities that a sizeable number of Filipino deportees driven out by the thousands from Malaysia since early 2000 belongs to the Bajau tribe.

"The present conflict and the insecurity in the Sulu waters have rendered the Sama Dilaut as easy targets of aggression and violence as chances of evading the dominant ethnic groups have become lesser for the Sama Dilaut," Ms. Arquiza, who is a Sama Dilaut or Bajau herself, said in her report to the UN.

She added, "Traditionally itinerant and boat-dwelling people, the Sama Dilaut life and culture rely much on the bounties of the seas.... Without the sea, there is no Sama Dilaut."